


Progression

by kameo_chan (orphan_account)



Series: For Want of a Nail [1]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Drama, Multi, Multiple Partners
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-30
Updated: 2011-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-19 22:12:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/kameo_chan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anora Mac Tir is a proud woman. Perhaps too proud, some would say.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Progression

Anora is five when her father motions one of the infantrymen to pick her up and hand her to him. He hoists her up into the saddle and wraps a protective arm around her. "See this, Anora?" he says, and with his free hand he sweeps the horizon, taking in all the vast stretches of land beneath the motion. "This is what we fight for. For freedom. For home. For Ferelden." And Anora looks and she sees, and even though she doesn't understand yet, she leans back into solid steel plating of her father's armour, because her father is a hero and heroes are always right.

\----

Anora is scarcely past her seventeenth summer when she lets Cailan take her. He is kind and clumsy and sweet in his attempt, and though she will be no virgin on her wedding day, she is still glad to have him. They move together, exploring skin and tasting sweat, each more eager than the other to know what intimate secrets might be learned. And when Cailan breached her virginity, makes her his in one hard and bittersweet thrust, she does not regret it. After all, Cailan is the man she loves, the man she has snuck out of her father's castle for to steal sweet kisses with amidst the smell of fresh hay behind the stables. So she clings to his broad shoulders as he moves inside her, makes love to her and revels in the way desire coils low and hot and tight in her groin and the way her pulse races as though she were fever-stricken.

And a few weeks later, when Cailan kneels before her father and asks her hand in marriage, Anora feels as though she is dreaming. And she thinks to herself that if this truly is a dream, she wishes to never wake up.

\----

When the first rumours of a possible Blight trickle in with travellers from the southern parts of Ferelden, Cailan almost jumps at the opportunity. He contacts Duncan and learns that yes, there has indeed been marked movement amongst the Darkspawn but that no, the Grey Wardens were not yet sure whether this posed a real threat or not. And Anora watches from her place beside her husband's throne as he draws up grandiose plans and sends missives to possible allies.

Their marriage has cooled off since their first few years together, and Anora knows the reason why. She lays a hand on the flat plane of her belly and rubs wistfully. She knows about the lies and accusations and rumours that float around the Palace like cold draughts of poisoned air. She has heard the word 'barren' on one too many a tongue for her liking. But still Cailan comes to her, makes her feel loved during the long, cold hours of Ferelden's bitter winter nights. And for now, it is enough.

\----

Her father is the first to tell her of Cailan's betrayal. Anora stares hard at the surface of her writing desk and tries not to let hot, pricking sensation of unshed tears bother her.

"Anora, love. Look at me," her father commands quietly. And Anora does, raising her gaze to meet her father's. And that is when the tears flow, stinging and painful. Loghain holds her to his chest, and she is reminded of the time he held her on horseback when she was a little girl. But there is no armour now, only the warmth of her father's solid chest through clothes more suited to a farmhand than a teyrn.

"I will not allow him!" she sobs, bunching her fists in the fabric of her father's coarse woollen shirt. "You won't allow him, will you father?" And her father lifts her chin with a hand strong and callused from many a year's worth of handling a sword, and presses kisses to her tear-stained cheeks.

"No, Anora. I will not."

\----

Cailan's death is more of a surprise than a shock when the news comes, and when her father returns, Anora seeks him out in one of the Palace's studies. "Father, did you -" she begins, but he cuts her off with a wave of his hand. He does not look up from the papers he is busily signing.

"I did what had to be done. For Ferelden. For you."

Anora feels rage and despair well inside of her to the point of breaking. She wants to slam her hands down onto the solid wood of the desk and scream until her throat bleeds. _Not dead! I didn't want him dead! Father, you promised to take care of this, not to murder the man I once loved!_

And with a jolt, the realization settles in. Not the man she loves, but the man she once loved. And wasn't it true? Had she felt any real affection for Cailan since her father had found his missives to that conniving Orlesian bitch? No, she thinks, she hadn't.

And from behind his place at the desk, her father looks up slowly, meets and holds her gaze. _I did it for you, Anora_ , that gaze says, and Anora knows it to be true. And without another word, she turns on her heel and flees to the safety of her chambers to cry her bitter, broken tears.

\----

During the months that follow Cailan's death, Anora finds herself thrust in the midst of a power struggle between her father and the rest of the Bannorn. On one hand she feels as though her father deserves the scrutiny and mistrust he now reaps, but she always catches herself before those thoughts can go very far. She knows how dangerous vindication can be, and in order to keep the throne, she tries to avoid it at all costs.

She has worked hard the past few years for the things she has, and no one, not even her father will take that away from her. So she tells herself and so she continues to think, right up until the day that the last of the Couslands of Highever waltzes into the Palace and tries to usurp her place with a low-born bastard.

Anora pesters and prods and pleads, but Lady Cousland and Arl Eamon and the rest of the Bannorn will not assent, and at the very last her father's life is dragged into the fray. And that is where Anora draws the line.

"Enough!" she commands of them, and for the first time since the Landsmeet began, the Assembly sees her for who she truly is. Anora raises her head and calls upon all of the considerable reserves of courage of her Mac Tir ancestry when she says, clearly: "So be it. To spare the life of my father, I will marry Alistair." There is silence for a beat, and then the uproar begins, but the only thing Anora cares to focus on is the face of her father.

Loghain looks up at her from where the guards have forced him to his knees. She thinks he looks as though he has been stabbed through the heart. And perhaps he has been. But Anora is a proud woman born of a proud line, and when the guards haul her father off to Fort Drakon, she does not cry. She knows that no amount of tears will mend what has broken beyond repair.

\----

Maric's bastard son looks nothing like Cailan, and for this at least, Anora is glad. She doesn't think she would've been able to stomach the idea of marrying him if he had. Alistair is bumbling, sarcastic and uncouth, and yet beneath it all there is a valour and a sensibility that had been sorely lacking in Cailan. And despite her best efforts to prove otherwise, Anora finds that despite his idiotic demeanor, Alistair is as much of a strategist as she is herself.

And so it is that she finds herself arrayed for the second time in her life in a brand new bridal gown. But this time she has an old sense of politics and cynicism to go along with it. She doesn't love the man standing beside her, not like she'd once loved his brother. But that is all right, she thinks, because at least this time she knows that it is a marriage of convenience only. And so she gives her vows and pledges her troth and in the back of her mind, she keeps the image of her father, kneeling and defeated but far from broken.

That night, Alistair takes her to bed, and it is as different from her first time as night is from day. Alistair's movements are slow and thoughtful and almost tender, as though he is afraid she might break. She is not his first, she knows, but she cannot help but feel as though she is seventeen again, as though they are the only ones in the world.

Much later, Anora lies nestled in the crook of her new husband's arm and thinks of what similarities there might be between men who share the same blood and yet seem nothing alike. She wonders whether she will come to love Alistair in time as she loved Cailan, and finds that the thought terrifies her. The last time she'd let her heart govern her, she had almost lost her husband to a power-hungry Orlesian tart.

So Anora slips out of Alistair's sleeping embrace, dresses hurriedly and hastens back to the comfort and familiarity of her own quarters. She will not allow herself to be made a fool of twice.

**Author's Note:**

> So... This came about after the first time I played through on the Human Noble origin as a female Cousland. Obviously I romanced the pants off Alistair, but I couldn't help but notice that Zevran seemed more than a trifle upset about it. And then I wanted to write Anora!fic because I find her character intruiging, and well... It snowballed from there.
> 
> Some artistic (oh, who am I kidding?) - okay, a lot of artistic licence was used creating this. Still, I'm actually rather fond of it.


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